I've been running a Linux (Debian 6) PC for a while now and I've been using it quite a lot without any problems - it has been totally stable. While I was online I noticed that the 'updates available' icon up near the networking icon was showing the availability of new updates, so I allowed them to happen - bad move - it prompted an immediate crash out to the command line and the system has now become completely unstable in the desktop / GUI and crashes in anything between zero and sixty seconds.

The mass of text error messages which appear are way above my level of understanding, but what I have found is that if I start Debian in recovery mode (in which it only proceeds to the command line after logging in as root) the system will work reliably as long as I don't start 'X'. If I do, same problem, CRASH, out of the desktop in under a minute. I haven't been able to divine exactly what it is that causes the crash, indeed, there seems no common cause or factor or 'thing that I do' which prompts the crash.

My question: Can I use Aptitude to roll back to before the changes were made: Or can I at least get it to identify all updates which were made within a certain time / date window so I can manually uninstall them and reinstall them again individually?